The Dead Media Notebook

by Bruce Sterling

  From Trevor Blake

  JOHN LOGIE BAIRD

  Scotsman John Logie Baird had long been an entrepreneur and inventor. When he was twelve he built his own telephone. He had invested in chutney in the West Indies, artificial diamonds in Glasgow and soap in London. In 1918 he held the patent for the Baird Undersock, a sock worn beneath regular socks.

  In 1920, at the age of 31, he began his life’s work, the undercredited discovery and development of television. Beginning with a personal ad in the London Times (“SEEING BY WIRELESS: Inventor of apparatus wishes to hear from someone who will assist [not financially] in making working model”), Baird set out to build a working television system using borrowed money and the material he had at hand, which included darning needles, hat boxes, a Rich Mix biscuit tin, sealing wax and a bicycle lantern. His Nipkow disk was cut from an old tea chest. In February 1923 he entered the shop of Hasting radio dealer Victor Mill and asked for assistance, saying “I’ve fitted up an apparatus for transmitting pictures and I can’t get it to go.”

  Mills accompanied Baird back to his laboratory / apartment and waved his hand in front of the neon: when Baird shouted “it’s here, it’s here!”, the first real-time electronic moving picture in world history occurred. Not long after Baird demonstrated his system to the local press, but was evicted from his apartment. Baird relocated to London and set up a second and lab in Soho. Using ventriloquist dummies (better able to withstand the intense heat and light of his equipment), he succeeded in transmitting a televised image one yard across his room.

  In March 1925 he gave the first public demonstration of television, sponsored by Selfridge’s Department store. A demonstration of television in January 1926 in Baird’s small, drafty attic apartment failed to impress the Royal Institute, particularly when the long white beard of one of the men became entangled in the mechanism.

  In Autumn of the next year he transmitted eight miles, and formed a company: Television Ltd. The first recorded television images were made on 10” wax disks called Phonovisors, no later than September 1927 in Baird’s labs: he had been awarded a patent for this technology the year before. Phonovisor disks captured 12.5 frames of 30-line resolution television per second. Baird also patented Noctovision, the use of infrared light in television, and demonstrated color television (using a rotating filter system) in 1927.

  By 1928, Baird Televisors sold for between 20 and 150 pounds (kits sold for 16 guineas). Baird’s assistant Benjamin Clapp travelled to New York City to receive the first transoceanic television signal. The box of equipment he used was labeled ‘experimental radio equipment’ to prevent customs from seizing it as a dangerous or profitable new technology. It took two months before a break in the weather allowed Clapp to see the image of Stukey Bill [a.k.a.“Stooky Bill”], the ventriloquist dummy head used in the Baird studio, but once the press was called in the event received one inch headlines across the nation. On the way home aboard the Berengeria, Clapp allowed the ship’s wireless operator to see his fiance in England via television while 1,000 miles out at sea.

  Eighteen licensed transmitters were in operation in the United States by the late 1920s, transmitting faces and silhouettes. General Electric’s House of Magic recorded synchronized sound and pictures in New York. In 1928 Bell Telephone transmitted a television image from New York to Washington D. C. The threat of losing television to the USA gave Baird leverage in convincing the BBC to begin television transmission.

  In 1928 Baird convinced a London surgeon to lend him an eyeball removed from a young man’s head. In his own words. “As soon as I was given the eye, I hurried in a taxicab to the laboratory.

  Within a few minutes I had the eye in the machine. Then I turned on the current and the waves carrying television were broadcast from the aerial. The essential image for television passed through the eye within half and hour after the operation. On the following day the sensitiveness of the eye’s visual nerve was gone. The optic was dead. I had been dissatisfied with the old-fashioned selenium cell and lens. I felt that television demanded something more refined. The most sensitive optical substance known is the nerve of the human eye. I had to wait a long time to get the eye because unimpaired ones are not often removed by surgeons. Nothing was gained from the experiment. It was gruesome and a waste of time.”

  The BBC began mechanical television transmission in 1929. In July 1930, the BBC transmitted Pirandello’s play “The Man with a Flower in His Mouth” in 240 lines of resolution. The heads and shoulders of the actors were shown as they spoke their lines and sat on a stool: when another actor was to be shown, a screen was held before the camera as the actors exchanged seats. The Derby was televised in June 1931: a camera waited at the finish line until the moment when the horses and jockeys passed by. The BBC was transmitting four days a week by August 1932.

  By this time, Baird’s financial backers began to insist he look into the electronic television of Philo Farnsworth. When Farnsworth travelled to England while raising money in his legal battles with RCA/EMI, he met with Baird and demonstrated his system. Baird explained the superiority of his system to Farnsworth, but after watching several minutes of cathode ray tube television he left the room without a word. Baird’s sponsors gave Farnsworth $50,000 to supply Baird with electronic television equipment. A fire that nearly destroyed the Alexander Palace studios soon after closed down the BBC, and when they reopened they were fully committed to the electronic television of EMI.

  After 1,500 successful mechanical transmissions, the BBC was ready to switch to the EMI system. Beginning September 1935, they held a final six-month trial, during which the two systems were transmitted on alternate weeks from Alexander Palace, 12 miles north of London. Studio A used the EMI system, while Studio B used the Baird film pickup system. Baird’s system lost, and on 2 November 1936 the BBC transmitted the first high-definition television signal using the EMI system. Many executives and technicians were invited to the studio on opening day, but when Baird showed up he was left wandering the halls, shut out from celebrating the technology he had developed. The final mechanical television transmission in England occurred in February 1937. Baird continued to develop television technology. In 1940, he introduced the Telechrome, an electronic color television system in which two electron guns scanned 600 - 650 lines on a white mica sheet coated with orange phosphor on one side and blue-green phosphor on the other. War time restrictions prevented full scale production of the Telechrome. At the time of his death in 1946, John Logie Baird was working on stereoscopic television.

  Source: BOOKSManly, Harold: DRAKE’S RADIO ENCYCLOPEDIA (Drank & Co. 1927) Ghirardi, Alfred: RADIO PHYSICS COURSE (Radio & Technical Pub. 1933) Zworkin, Y. K. and Morton, G. A.: TELEVISION (John Wiley 1940) Goldstein, Norm: THE HISTORY OF TELEVISON (Portland House 1991) Kisseloff, Jeff: THE BOX (Viking 1995) Ritchie, Michael: PLEASE STAND BY (Overlook Press 1994) Winship, Michael: TELEVISION (Random House 1988) Yanczer, Peter: THE MECHANICS OF TELEVISON (Peter Yanczer 1987) (Peter Yanczer, 835 Bricken Pl., St. Louis MO 63122 USA) MAGAZINES Popular Science, March 1932 Mechanics and Handicraft, Vol. 1 #1, Winter 1933 Television: Journal of the Royal Television Society, April 1995 VIDEO The Race for Television, BBC

  Baird Mechanical Television, Part Three: Baird Mechanical Television Part 3: Other Countries, Other Systems

  From Trevor Blake

  PART THREE: OTHER COUNTRIES, OTHER SYSTEMS

  England and the United States were not the only countries that utilized mechanical television. The race to be the first country to develop television was truly international and included Canada, France, Germany, the Soviet Union and Japan.

  The base for mechanical television research in the Soviet Union was Leningrad. The first Russian television image was transmitted in 1928, and the first public broadcast occurred in 1934. The first broadcast began “Attention, attention, attention radio viewers: watch, listen to the first television concert.” The station was soon flooded with letters from radio listeners as
king where they were supposed to look to see the concert.

  In March 1935, Germany offered the world’s first low- definition (electronic) television service. It used 180 lines of resolution (compared to the 405 offered by the BBC over a year later) and was seen mainly in public viewing rooms. The Berlin Olympics were transmitted by television, and in March 1936 a video telephone system was established. No public official was recorded as using television: the medium was used entirely for entertainment during this period. While England, the USSR and the USA ceased transmissions during World War Two, Germany paused only during the invasion of Poland.

  If the BBC had not adopted the EMI system, it is unlikely England would have had the facilities to manufacture cathode ray tubes on an industrial level. And had this not been possible, the manufacturing of radar screens, and therefore the outcome of the war, might also have been in question. Mechanical imaging systems remain a vital technology.

  Computer mice use two slotted disks that are rotated by the track ball. These disks are positioned next to tiny lights: as the disks spin the lights are registered as on or off by photosensors, and software translates the blinking lights as x-y cursor position. Software or sound activated moving mirrors are the key component to laser light shows as well as some virtual reality headgear.

  While not commercially successful, video disks (as opposed to laser disks) were an entirely functional medium: a magnetic-tipped needle read encoded pulses in a large plastic disk. All of these technologies, as well as television, are directly indebted to John Logie Baird.

  Source: BOOKSManly, Harold: DRAKE’S RADIO ENCYCLOPEDIA (Drank & Co. 1927) Ghirardi, Alfred: RADIO PHYSICS COURSE (Radio & Technical Pub. 1933) Zworkin, Y. K. and Morton, G. A.: TELEVISION (John Wiley 1940) Goldstein, Norm: THE HISTORY OF TELEVISON (Portland House 1991) Kisseloff, Jeff: THE BOX (Viking 1995) Ritchie, Michael: PLEASE STAND BY (Overlook Press 1994) Winship, Michael: TELEVISION (Random House 1988) Yanczer, Peter: THE MECHANICS OF TELEVISON (Peter Yanczer 1987) (Peter Yanczer, 835 Bricken Pl., St. Louis MO 63122 USA) MAGAZINES Popular Science, March 1932 Mechanics and Handicraft, Vol. 1 #1, Winter 1933 Television: Journal of the Royal Television Society, April 1995 VIDEO The Race for Television, BBC

  Fire Signals and Horse Post on the Great Wall of China

  From Bruce Sterling

  “System of Fire Signalling”

  “There can be no doubt that the main duty of the detachments echeloned along the Limes was to provide guards for the watch-towers who would give timely alarm by signals to the rest of the line in case of the approach of raiders.

  The numerous wooden slips which accurately register the time and other details of fire signals received, or else refer to arrangements made for lighting them, would alone suffice to prove that this means of optical telegraphy was in regular use along the border.

  “But the abundant information from early Chinese texts collected by M. Chavannes shows that the system of fire signalling was known and practiced along the frontiers of the Empire long before the time of the Hans. The distinction which those texts indicate between signal fires visible at night and smoke signals intended for use by day is distinctly mentioned in one of the records on wood. In another, neglect to transmit such a signal received from one side of the line by immediately lighting a fire in turn is acknowledged as a grievous delinquency.

  “We are not informed by our records as to any devices by which such fire signals could be varied to convey more definite news along the guarded line. But since later texts quoted by M. Chavannes refer to a method marking the relative strength of the attacking force by corresponding repetition of the fire signals, it is likely that similar devices were practiced in Han times.

  “We read elsewhere that General Ma Cheng, when reorganizing the defences of the northern border in 38-43 A.D., placed the fire-signal stations ten Li or about two and a half miles apart; and this accords remarkably with the average distances observed from tower to tower on the earlier Tun-huang Limes, due allowance being made for the varying configuration of the ground.

  “No doubt such a system of optic telegraphy was insufficient to assure the rapid communication of warnings at all times or for the communication of important particulars. Hence the need for mounted messengers repeatedly mentioned in the records, who by relays of horses kept ready at the stations could cover distances at great speed. The presence of such mounts was in fact attested by the plentiful horse-dung we found at each tower, however confined the accommodation near it.

  “A piece of ancient Chinese poetry which M. Chavannes translates, though referring to a part of the border much farther east, gives so graphic a picture of such a scene that I cannot refrain from quoting it:

  ‘Every ten Li a horse starts; every five Li a whip is raised high; a military order of the Protector-General of the Trans-Frontier regions has arrived with news that the Huns were besieging Chiu-ch’uan; but just then the snow-flakes were falling on the halls along which the barrier stretches, and the signal fires could raise no smoke.”

  Source: Ruins of Desert Cathay: Personal Narrative of Explorations in Central Asia and Westernmost China by M.Aurel Stein Macmillan and Company, Limited St. Martin’s Street, London 1912 915.84 St34r v.2 Main Library University of Texas at Austin Volume II, Chapter LXIII, page 152,

  The MiniCine toy projector

  From Stephen Herbert

  The MiniCine Toy Projector.

  Arguably ‘The Best Toy Projector Ever Made’ (my description!). The MiniCine was sold in Britain by Martin Lucas Ltd., from addresses in Balham, South London, and Hollingwood, Lancashire. It was introduced around 1949/50, and seems to have disappeared about 1958. It was advertised in various publications, from the Film User handbook to Eagle comic.

  There were two basic models in metal, one for use with a transformer, and one that was larger and took batteries in the base. The magic of the MiniCine was that it could give a five minute movie show with just one foot of 35mm film. It achieved this with an ingenious mechanism that moved the filmstrip up and down intermittently, stopping it in four positions. There were four rows of pictures on the strip (animated cartoon drawings), and the sequence was designed to give a repeat cyclic motion.

  At the same time that the strip was moving up and down, it was also moved gradually along, so new parts of the strip came into view (a sort of motion picture panorama). All strip drawings, even those based on Disney licensed characters, were specially drawn for the system. The result was (and is, I’ve got four of them, and sixty strips) rather wonderful.

  A particularly effective sequence is Bambi’s escape from the forest fire. Not all strips were ‘movie,’ some were sequences of still pictures (including educational subjects). There was also a MiniCine (Disney model) projector sold in the USA. I have a photograph of one but no further details. It had a plastic body. Not really an entirely dead medium, as I used one to give a show at a friend’s wedding party last month. I do not know of any published information on the MiniCine, apart from a technical paper that I wrote and distributed about 10 years ago.

  The Theatrophone, the electrophone

  From Bruce Sterling

  “At about the same time as the telephone and gramophone were beginning to be domesticated, a near precursor of the radio was going through a similar process. It was a home- entertainment invention of about 1893 known as the ‘Theatrophone,’ a device which grew out of the invention of the telephone and was demonstrated at the World Exhibition of Electricity in 1881.

  “For just a few years at the start of the century, Parisians could have Theatrophone instruments installed which actually provided home entertainment, rather than mere telephone communication, by relaying live performances from theatres. However, unlike the wireless, the Theatrophone needed wires between the transmission apparatus and the receivers, rather than broadcasting via air waves. Microphones installed on the stages of such theatres as the Paris Opera picked up the sounds of live performances and relayed them by wire to
the telephone exchange, where an operator was on hand to offer a selection of programmes to subscribers renting Theatrophone receivers.

  “Several different programs, related from various theatres, were available to subscribers who could make their own selection by revolving a switch and inserting coins into their machines to buy a fixed amount of listening time. The Theatrophone receivers, ornamental boxes with telephone earpieces attached on trailing wires, even offered stereophonic listening by the use of a pair of microphones left and right on the stage, connected by twin lines to the home receivers. These were also installed in hotel lounges and in restaurants; furthermore, programmes could be relayed to London and Brussels via normal international telephone distribution exchanges.

  “By 1895, Britain had its own equivalent of the French Theatrophone. It was called the ‘Electrophone’ and it offered subscribers a similar service via their telephone lines and as well as receiving ‘local’ relays from theatres, churches and London’s Royal Opera House, they could also switch to exchange programmes from Europe via a link-up with the French company. The Theatrophone idea might have proved a great success as an entertainment and news broadcasting medium if it had not been for the appearance of the wireless which nipped it in the bud.”

  Source: RADIO ART by Robert Hawes, photography by Paul Straker-Welds Green Wood Publishing Company Ltd, London 1991 ISBN 1-872532-29-2 page 24

  Peepshows

  From Stephen Herbert

  Not too much in print about peepshows, but the following are worth having: ‘Peep Shows’, written, printed and published by Paul Braithwaite. The author uses his own pen-and-ink sketches of peepshow engravings, photos,and paintings to guide us through the enormous range of peepshow types, from 17th to 20th centuries; ‘back’ peep shows, ‘caravan’ types, etc. Includes notes on panoramas, dioramas, and mutoscopes.